


breaking up is hard to do!

by buckgaybarnes



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Break Up, Getting Back Together, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Passionate and Fascinating Exchange of Letters, Pre-Canon, canon disastrous first meeting...and slightly less-canon second meeting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-27 23:22:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17776181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckgaybarnes/pseuds/buckgaybarnes
Summary: The worst part about all of this, really, is that technically it’s not a break-up, so Newt can’t even mourn properly.





	breaking up is hard to do!

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ksci_janitor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ksci_janitor/gifts).



> i mean, like, technically, this could be canon for all we know
> 
> (as per ksci_janitor's request!!)

The worst part about all of this, really, is that technically it’s not a break-up, so Newt can’t even mourn properly. He can’t, justifiably, go through his standard post break-up rituals like he normally would—no shitty pizza takeout three nights in a row, no tearing through a box of frozen mini cream puffs (or eclairs, if he’s _really_ upset) from Trader Joe’s, no searching the Smiths on Spotify and hitting play until he’s wailing into a pillow—because he and Hermann were never actually _dating_. They weren’t even technically friends. They were pen pals. Colleagues. Pen colleagues. Their relationship is purely professional in nature—

Oh, God. Was. It _was_ purely professional in nature.

It’s not a break-up, but it all sure does fucking feel like a break-up, between Hermann (red-faced, furious, pushing himself to his feet at their table) ordering Newt to never contact him again, the stack of Hermann’s letters now tied up and relegated to a shoebox under Newt’s bed, a string of despondent emojis in Newt’s phone contact list where Hermann’s number used to be. The fact that Newt’s spent the last few hours in a cave of blankets in his pitch-black apartment crying so hard that he’s had to pop ibuprofen twice for his resulting headaches.

(On the second go to his medicine cabinet for ibuprofen, Newt wipes his eyes on the sleeve of his rattiest, softest hoodie and stares at himself in the mirror—at his red, puffy eyes, the dark circles under them—before resigning himself to ordering pizza after all. Maybe it _is_ a break-up.)

It’s hard enough fielding questions from his dad, who’s well-meaning in his stream of inquiries as to how Newt’s first meeting with Hermann played out (did it go well? was Hermann nice? are Newt and Hermann seeing each other again soon? should we be expecting a wedding announcement soon—just kidding?), but it’s even worse when he heads back to campus on Wednesday morning (after cancelling his lectures and office hours Monday and Tuesday in order to properly wallow in self-pity) and has to deal with his colleagues. A good decade younger than most of them, Newt’s not exactly _swimming_ in friends at work, but nevertheless, they at least pretend to have some level of good-natured investment in his personal life. They know about Hermann, at least, and they know about Newt’s meeting with Hermann (Newt never shuts the fuck up about Hermann, which they’re all too eager to tease him about), and maybe it’s kinda Newt’s fault for always referring to Hermann in passing as his _long-distance boyfriend_ to avoid explaining the whole penpal-colleague-he’s-kinda-in-love-with-thing, but the second he sits down in his office and prepares to backread two days' worth of emails to his university address there are two curious heads poking around the doorframe.

Newt buries his face in his hands so he won’t have to look at them. “We broke up,” he half-shouts. His door creaks shut.

 

* * *

 

Newt’s twenty-nine and he’s long resolved himself to the fact that he’ll never see, or hear from (in any way, shape, or form), Hermann Gottlieb again. Not just resolved—accepted. Embraced. He’s embraced the fact that he’ll never have anything to do with Hermann Gottlieb again. It’s fine, it’s...whatever. The box of Hermann’s letters gathers dust under his bed (Newt hasn’t cracked the lid since his last birthday, when he ate an entire store-bought cake and allowed himself another good cry), and Hermann’s emails have been long deleted (most of them have been deleted), and Newt has a hot date with a hot bassist in a few weeks (nice guy, septum piercing, muscles), so he’s long-since moved on, thank you.

He’d be lying if he said he didn’t miss Hermann every now and then, though. When he goes to collect the day's mail and he can’t help but _hope_ , maybe, that Hermann’s decided to extend an olive branch after all this time. When he scrolls through old text conversations he couldn’t bring himself to delete (because Hermann complimented him, or Hermann wished him luck, or Hermann sent him a smiley face), and he’s faced with how _easy_ it was talking to Hermann. Or now, even, at this conference he was invited to by special invitation that’s the kind of thing that Newt can only just bear and Hermann would fucking _hate_ , the kind of thing they’d text each other a sarcastic running commentary during.

At least Newt gets free fancy drinks and food. It’s a fair payoff for having to don a tie that’s thicker than a quarter of an inch.

“We’re very pleased to have you with us, Dr. Geiszler,” the rich guy touring Newt around the conference hall says, all smiles, and Newt raises his mimosa glass in a mock-toast and forces a smile.

“Pleased to be here, dude,” he says. Play nice, and maybe they’ll cut him a check. MIT loves him, but even they can only fund him so far.

By the time they finish the tour, they’ve still got a while before the event starts and Newt’s calculating how many tiny shrimp he can eat in that timeframe when they stop in front of a small corner. A single guest lurks there alone at a table, flipping through a pamphlet, nursing an untouched drink, and looking very much like he doesn’t want to be there _either,_ and when he looks up Newt thinks _of fucking course!_ “Ah!” Newt’s guide says. “Dr. Geiszler, are acquainted with Dr. Gottlieb?”

Hermann drops the pamphlet and knocks his drink across the table.

“Unfortunately,” Newt says, at the same time Hermann (elbow patches on his blazer, dorky glasses perched on the very end of his nose, wide lips twisted into a scowl, mopping up the drink with a pristine handkerchief) says “We’ve met before.”

There’s a tense silence.

“I’ll leave you two be,” Newt's guide says, with an awkward pat farewell at Newt’s arm.

The moment he’s gone, Hermann rises to his feet and rounds on Newt. “What in the blazes are you doing here?” he hisses.

Newt downs the rest of his mimosa and snags another from a passing waiter. “I happen to be invited, Hermann,” he says. He points to his name badge. _Dr. Newton Geiszler, Honorable Guest._ “I’m a guest of honor, bitch.”

“Don’t call me a bitch,” Hermann says.

Newt hands Hermann his newly empty glass. “Who do I have to blow to get some of those fancy tiny foods?” he says, because apparently, seeing his sorta-ex again is unleashing every primal, feral, monstrous instinct in him. He’s glossing straight over uncomfortable civility to outright hostility. Whatever. It’s not like he gives a shit about what Hermann Gottlieb thinks about him anymore. “Those fucking—pastry things. Or the tiny little quiches.” He cranes his neck around for one of the waiters with the food trays.

Hermann thrusts the glass back at him. “How charming,” he says, with a look of pure, unequivocal disgust. “You haven’t changed at all.”

Newt winks. “Mm, and neither have you. Tell me, have they figured out how to dislodge that massive stick from your ass yet?”

“And just as immature and unprofessional as ever, too,” Hermann continues cheerfully, like Newt hadn’t spoken. “Truly unbearable to be around, one might say.”

“Would you say that?” Newt says.

There’s only a few inches between their chests. Newt’s not sure when that happened. “I might,” Hermann says, and his tongue darts out over his wide, wide lips, his wide, wide lips Newt can’t stop staring at. “I might also say,” Hermann’s voice drops low, “that you’re a  _loathsome_ little wretch of a man.”

“ _Ooh_. That all?”

“And pathetic,” Hermann says, but it sounds like a compliment, “and—”

The conference doesn’t technically start for another hour, anyway.

 

They miss the conference.

“This was an exceedingly bad decision,” Hermann announces to the empty confines of Newt’s bland hotel room, and he lights up a cigarette in blatant disregard for the three _No Smoking!_ signs they passed on their way in (and, to a lesser extent, blatant disregard for their health).

“Maybe,” Newt says, and he lays his arm across Hermann’s chest, curling his fingers around his side. Suddenly self-conscious, despite his earlier assertion that he doesn’t give a shit about what Hermann Gottlieb thinks of him anymore, he says (not looking up from Hermann’s left pec) “It wasn’t too bad, was it?”

Hermann flicks ash onto the sheets. Probably just to piss Newt off. _Newt’s_ the one that’ll get charged for any singed sheets, not Hermann. “I suppose not,” Hermann says, hesitantly. “It was...enjoyable.” Then he flicks more ash and adds, with a nod at Newt’s newest addition to his body art, “It would’ve been more enjoyable if I didn’t have a great bloody kaiju staring at me the whole time.”

Newt pulls the bedsheets up over his chest so only the very tip of his big tattoo peaks out. “Jackass,” he says. He does his best to glare, but it’s hard to do that and still be able to see the general shape of Hermann without his glasses on. “I rocked your world and you know it.”

“ _Mm_ ,” Hermann hums, skeptically, and he blows out a cloud of smoke.

“Fine,” Newt snarls, and he jams his glasses on, rolls over to the nightstand, and starts fumbling with the pile of condoms and travel packets of lube they discreetly acquired from the reception desk and have made a _sizeable_ dent in already. Hermann quickly snubs out his cigarette on the bedpost (and leaves behind a _fucking_ scorch mark that Newt’ll probably also be fined for) and eyes him up in anticipation. “This time—”

“Yes, yes,” Hermann says, tossing the blackened orange stub to the floor, and he pulls Newt on top of him.

 

Hermann sees him off at the airport on Sunday evening. “Well,” he says, one hand clenched tight around the head of his cane, the other around the handle of his small carry-on, and he looks intermittently between the departure board, the dirty floor, and Newt’s face. Hermann’s own flight doesn’t leave for another six hours. “Er. It was nice to...catch up, Newton.”

“It was nice fucking, too,” Newt says a bit too loud, just for the distinct pleasure of seeing Hermann flush and squirm. (He briefly considers offering Hermann some farewell head in one of the nearby—and probably filthy—bathroom stalls, just to make him squirm some more, but that might be pushing it.)

“Yes.” Hermann clears his throat uncomfortably. “That was—well.”

Newt waits all of ten seconds before dropping his bag and enveloping Hermann in a hug. Hermann drops his bag, too, and presses his face into the crook of Newt’s neck and clings tight to him. “Text me, okay?” Newt says in his ear and pats his back. It’s a bit more than a friendly, companionable touch—he lingers, makes sure to drag his fingertips over Hermann’s shoulderblades and the down the dip of his spine. Hermann shivers a little. Newt really, really likes touching Hermann, he's discovered. “I miss you.”

“I will,” Hermann says. “Newton...”

Newt’s gate flashes up on the board above their heads. Newt pulls away from Hermann, but only long enough to grip the sides of his face and pull him right back into a kiss. They kissed plenty last night, and they kissed plenty this morning, but those were rough, biting, angry; this is sweet, this is nice, this is gentle. The first kiss with Hermann Newt used to fantasize about. “Text me,” Newt repeats firmly, while Hermann blinks his pretty brown eyes at him. Newt claps the side of Hermann's arm. “I’m serious, dude.”

A smile, small and hopeful, spreads across Hermann’s face. He nods.

 

* * *

 

A year later, the Pan Pacific Defense Corps offers Newt a spot at their base in Hong Kong, fully paid, research fully funded, as many specimens and samples as they can get their hands on for him guaranteed. The only caveat—and it’s so very, very insignificant, they assure Newt—is that he’ll have to share his laboratory space. (They’ve hired someone else, see, far more into the theoretical and the abstract than Newt, but they’re sure their research will compliment each other’s nicely.) Does Dr. Geiszler know Dr. Hermann Gottlieb?

Newt forwards Hermann the email that night. _How does lab partners sound?_ he writes.

**Author's Note:**

> find me at my usual spots, hermannsthumb at tumblr and hermanngaylieb at twitter!


End file.
